


volume adjustment

by pearl_o



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Gen, M/M, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 08:10:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6071655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearl_o/pseuds/pearl_o
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles and his powers, in four stanzas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	volume adjustment

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr for the prompt "A deafening sound."

**i.**

Mother sent him away to America because of the war, but now the war is in America, too. He wonders if she is going to send him away somewhere else now, but months pass and nothing has changed. Perhaps there's nowhere else to send him. The war is everywhere.

It's hard to imagine there could be anywhere safer than here, anyway. He's locked off, away and secure in a faraway castle, just like a boy in a storybook.

The boys in the storybooks never seem lonely.

He's used to being alone with his own thoughts, his own private games and fancies and imaginings. He's not quite sure how long it takes him to notice some of the voices are not his.

At first, when he concentrates, he can't quite hear--more like murmurs, too soft to make out. Almost as if a radio has been left on in the next room over, except that there's never a radio on when he checks.

The thoughts get louder with time. Clearer. 

There has to be a reason, he thinks, if he can just find out what it is, and so he reads and reads and reads, and ignores the obvious solution ( _madness_ ), and ignores the loneliness that's somehow only increased. 

(All these people and he only feels more isolated.)

He meets a girl in his kitchen who can do extraordinary things, and his relief and joy is so overwhelming he doesn't know what to do or say. _I'm not the only one_ , he hears her think, and yes, yes, he feels the same.

* * *

**ii.**

He prides himself on his control. His telepathy is a delicate instrument, not a blunt weapon, and he can choose exactly how he uses it, when and how and to what degree. Nothing takes him by surprise.

Nothing, that is, except _this_ : the pain and desperation and yearning that echoes out into the night like the sounding of a bell or a clap of thunder. It's a deafening sound, staggering him midstep. The force of it is overwhelming enough that part of him can't believe that everyone can't hear it, feel it, like he does.

He can't do anything in that moment but what he does: follow those thoughts directly back to the mind they came from. He jumps into an ocean and he clings to the stranger-who-is-already-not-a-stranger as he drags the man from back from the brink of death and afterward, treading water in the Miami night, staring back into Erik's shocked face, he feels filled to the brim with that relief and recognition that he's only felt once before in his life.

(Later, after everything goes so terribly wrong between them, he can't remember anyone else's voice but Erik's, in those few urgent and precious months together. His memory is usually flawless, but he knows that can't be right. Still, every time he thinks back, he hears Erik's mind, sharper and purer and shining, drowning out everyone else's ordinary thoughts and pushing them to the side.)

* * *

**iii.**

The days are quiet now. The nights, too. There's very little difference between the two anymore; it seems ages since they last saw the sun.

When he reaches out with his mind, to the utmost edges of his range, he rarely finds another mind: only the three still with him, Erik and Ororo and Logan. With their modified Cerebro, there are others, but not many. Fewer, it seems, every day.

He always thought quiet would mean peaceful.

* * *

**iv.**

Hank asks him, more than once, if he's certain he wants to go off the serum cold turkey. 

He is certain. He doesn't trust himself not to be. Even after everything Logan told him--even after everything that older version of himself showed him--even after all of it, the silence is still tempting. In the middle of the night, when he thinks he'll never sleep again, when all he can hear is the shrieks and grunts and grumbles of so many people....

(Erik had scoffed, on the plane. It had hurt, more than he likes to admit, and it had only increased his anger for Erik, then. With a little more distance now, he thinks: Erik has always been alone. Erik, in prison, was as alone as a person could possibly be. Everything in Erik has always struck outwards, all of his self-defensive gestures offensive strikes as well. Of course Erik couldn't possibly understand.)

He remembers Logan on the plane to Washington DC, the emotion in his voice as he spoke of his friends in the future. He remembers the students his older self spoke of, all the young mutants, the pain and the hope of so many, and the school that would help guide them. Not alone; not lost and frightened, like he was, like Raven or Erik were.

His control doesn't return immediately, but it does return. The worst of the thoughts don't go away, but they fade back into their proper balance, letting the sounds of other minds take their turn, subtler but no less important.

_Connection_ , Charles thinks, and he lets himself hear it all.


End file.
